YouTube Targets the Mother Goose SetFebruary 23, 2015
Google on Monday announced YouTube Kids, a new mobile app designed to deliver family-friendly video content. The YouTube Kids app provides streaming content curated for families -- everything from do-it-yourself arts and crafts and elementary geometry clips to rugrat favorites like the Mother Goose Club and Minecraft, as well as lots and lots of train videos.

Is an Apple Maps Upgrade in the Works?February 09, 2015
The ad on Apple's job site is innocuous enough, seeking an engineering project manager for Apple Search. However, that raises questions about whether Apple has plans to further improve its Maps app, possibly by strengthening local listings, which are increasingly important to businesses. "Apple may well revamp its street maps, as that application has far more value in an increasingly mobile world," noted Alan Pelz-Sharpe, a research director at the 451 Group.

Verizon Addresses Supercookie ConundrumFebruary 03, 2015
Users of Verizon Wireless' network and products will find it will be easier to opt out of the carrier's tracking activities. The carrier has been using a "supercookie" identifier to follow smartphone users' mobile Web activity. Verizon has given consumers ways to opt out of various marketing programs, but escaping the reach of supercookies has proven to be elusive for consumers.

Facebook's Place Tips May Lead Advertisers to Pot of GoldFebruary 02, 2015
Facebook last week announced Place Tips for iPhones, a feature that will give subscribers location-based recommendations at the top of their News Feeds. No mention was made of launching Place Tips for Android or Windows Phone devices. Tapping on Place Tips will call up the information, which will include posts and photos friends have shared about a particular place.

Tune Strikes a Chord With InvestorsJanuary 30, 2015
Mobile marketing company Tune has raised $27 million in funding, it announced Thursday. Icon Ventures partner Jeb Miller will join Tune's board. Icon led the funding round; Accel Partners and Performance Equity Management also participated. Tune will use the proceeds to grow its engineering team, introduce new products and generally invest in the services it offers.

Google to Add Mobile Carrier Hat to Its CollectionJanuary 23, 2015
Google reportedly is planning to set up shop as an MVNO, purchasing bandwidth from Sprint and T-Mobile in order to offer its own wireless service. Details are sparse, but Sprint is said to be putting a volume trigger into its contract that would allow for renegotiation if Google's customer volume should exceed a predefined number. The project, led by Nick Fox reportedly bears the code-name "Nova."

Verizon's Cookies Never CrumbleJanuary 16, 2015
Verizon advertising partner Turn is using the carrier's Unique Identifier Header, or UIDH, to maintain tracking cookies on smartphones even after privacy-minded users have deleted them, Jonathan Mayer, a computer scientist and lawyer at Stanford University, reported this week. Turn shares the cookies with dozens of major websites and advertising networks.

Twitter Opens Entire Multibillion-Tweet Gold Mine to SearchersNovember 20, 2014
Twitter this week began indexing every public tweet posted since it began operating in 2006. "Our long-standing goal has been to let people search through every tweet ever published," said Yi Zhuang, who led the project team. Use cases Zhuang cited for the new infrastructure include results for entire TV and sports seasons, conferences, industry discussions and long-lived hashtag conversations.

Facebook Lubes PR Gears to Dampen Privacy WorriesNovember 14, 2014
Facebook on Thursday announced Privacy Basics, a set of interactive guides to answer the most commonly questions about how users can control their information on its site. It also aired proposed updates to its terms, data policy and cookies policy; improvements to ad targeting; and expansion of user control over ads. "This is mostly a messaging exercise," said tech analyst Rob Enderle.

Verizon, AT&T Are Watching YouNovember 05, 2014
The Electronic Frontier Foundation this week renewed its protests against Verizon Wireless' and AT&T's use of supercookies that can't be deleted or disabled to track customers' mobile Web-browsing activities without their knowledge. The carriers' tracking isn't new -- Verizon has been using these supercookies for two years. However, that has not been generally known.

Facebook Aims to Deliver Real News to Mobile News FeedsOctober 29, 2014
Facebook reportedly has been meeting with publishers to discuss better ways of collaborating. It apparently wants to implement a more seamless way for mobile users to access news and magazine articles, as well as other content developed for digital sites, directly from their News Feed. Facebook is considering inviting publishers to post their content inside its mobile app.

Investors Quiver Over Twitter's Shaky ProspectsOctober 29, 2014
Twitter shares closed Tuesday at $43.78, down almost 10 percent, even though the company's Q3 earnings report showed monthly active users grew 23 percent. Granted, that was down a tick from the previous quarter's 24 percent growth -- but recall the World Cup was being held at that time, driving user growth explosively. Germany's win saw Twitter use peak at nearly 619,000 tweets a minute.

Top 5 Ways to Make Money With SoftwareOctober 20, 2014
While app developers generally aim to make money off their creations, this goal is often relegated to second-tier status by programmers who but the product first and foremost, as they should. Therefore, in order to minimize the time needed to devote to a monetization strategy, developers generally choose one of the following tried-and-true methods.

Wireless Carriers Could Take a Shine to Ad-BlockingOctober 14, 2014
Shine Technologies may well upend the Net neutrality issue with the launch of AdSight, an ad-tracking product in development. AdSight reportedly will allow carriers to monitor the ads being delivered over their pipes. The data provided will be very granular, including who the ads are from and the level of individual ad impressions. The technology also will be able to block ads selectively.

Don't Look Now, but Ads Are Coming to SnapchatOctober 09, 2014
Ads soon will arrive on Snapchat. However, they will not target individual users. Rather, they'll appear in a more generalized fashion within the service's Snapchat Stories feature among shared photos and videos, CEO Evan Spiegel said Wednesday.
A new service for disappearing content and ads, called "Snapchat Discovery," reportedly also is in the works for launch this year.

Facebook Sharpens Audience Network TargetingOctober 08, 2014
Facebook on Tuesday further opened its Audience Network to third-party developers and publishers. It debuted the platform in April, positioning it as a mobile monetization tool that would leverage Facebook's 1.5 million advertisers and the millions of users who sign into apps using their Facebook credentials. The platform is now available to developers and publishers around the world.

Facebook Launches Atlas to Shoulder the Whole Digital-Advertising WorldSeptember 29, 2014
Facebook on Monday announced Atlas, a rebuilt ad platform that gives marketers access to its vast troves of user data and helps them direct highly targeted ads across the Web. "Atlas delivers people-based marketing, helping marketers reach real people across devices, platforms and publishers," explained Erik Johnson, head of the new Facebook service.

Facebook Asks Users to Bare Souls Over Ad HidingSeptember 12, 2014
Facebook has updated its ad policy with two changes. One gives users the option of explaining why they don't want to see a specific ad in their News Feed. The second update takes this new policy a step further by giving more weight to the feedback provided from users who rarely hide ads. Facebook's goal is to identify ads that aren't good fits or are generally offensive.

Comcast Ad Tinkering Could Muck Up WiFi SecuritySeptember 10, 2014
Comcast has begun using JavaScript injection to serve ads for its services to devices connected to its publicly accessible Xfinity WiFi hotspots across the U.S. The ads are fleeting, but they can appear roughly every seven minutes. The program reportedly began months ago. "This practice is definitely concerning for multiple reasons," said the Electronic Freedom Foundation's Jeremy Gillula.

Twitter Cautiously Experiments With Buy ButtonSeptember 09, 2014
Twitter on Monday began testing a new Buy button with a small percentage of its users in the U.S. -- one of the first steps in a larger initiative to build purchase functionality into the service. A small group of brands, including Burberry, Home Depot, Keith Urban, the Nature Conservatory and Soundgarden, are participating by sending offers that are unique for Twitter users.

Twitter Lets Ordinary Users Get AnalyticalAugust 29, 2014
Twitter this week announced that its analytics tool now can be used by everyone. Twitter's analytics tool lets users click on any tweet to see how people engage with it in real time. They can compare their tweet activity month over month and see how they trend over time. Users also can click on a tweet to see the number of retweets, replies, favorites, follows or clicks received.

Facebook Trains Sights on ClickbaitersAugust 26, 2014
Clickbaiting may soon come to an end on Facebook, which has launched an effort to deal with the problem. Posts with clickbait headlines get higher placement in News Feeds, pushing down more desirable content. Eighty percent of the time, users prefer headlines that help them decide whether they want to read a full article before having to click through, a Facebook survey indicated.

Amazon Aims to Skewer Google's Cash CowAugust 26, 2014
Amazon appears to be readying an advertising platform to compete with Google's AdWords.
It reportedly has started talking up its new Amazon Sponsored Links platform with potential partners and is anticipating a launch later this year. Ads from the new platform would replace those from Google currently found on Amazon Web pages. They also would be sold outside the Amazon universe.

The Many Faces of Multivariate TestingAugust 14, 2014
When Facebook and OKCupid recently admitted they had been tinkering with headlines and content to see how users reacted, many consumers were outraged -- but the business community just shrugged. What the companies were doing was simply a form of multivariate testing -- albeit in the case of OKCupid, it was particularly aggressive. The practice itself has been around for years.